Sex: What’s changed since the 80s?

Victoria’s angels spill on seduction

Advice: My mum is driving me crazy

Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman split

Kunis named ‘sexiest woman alive’

The truth about women and sex

If you can’t say anything nice …

When sharing goes a little too far

Why we must embrace marriage equality

Sex on a first date. Would you?

Advice: Should we make up or break up?

Thirty years ago, the average man thought the clitoris was a Greek hotel and the average woman didn’t know how to enlighten him.

A man’s sex education consisted of what his misinformed friends told him.

As an editor on British national newspapers, I received letters from confused and timid women, which made it clear that sex, from a woman’s point of view, needed to be explicitly addressed.

During this period, despite the Swinging Sixties, the perception of sex was that everybody did it.

You could sunbathe topless, wear see-through dresses and fornicate more than previously, but nobody actually talked about sex: it was considered embarrassing.

The contraceptive pill had recently appeared but few women felt sexually self-confident.

Women, and young girls especially, were being pressured by their boyfriends to have sex.

Girls were hesitant, confused about sex. Now that they didn’t risk pregnancy . . . should they or shouldn’t they? Did first-time sex leave you feeling like a goddess or a doormat? Would he still love you tomorrow? What did ‘being good in bed’ actually mean?

The only sex education I had received from my mother was by way of book that featured goldfish – had I fallen in love with a goldfish I would have known exactly what to do.

My friends were given similar birds-and-bees publications.

We actually learned about sex from a banned blockbuster, Forever Amber By Kathleen Winsor, which was passed around school in a dust jacket of A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young.

Mindful of this, I finally wrote my textbook as a novel, and Lace was subsequently described as the book that taught men about women and women about themselves.

Lace gave the reader explicit information about sex. It helped women to discover their sexuality and take charge of it: it generated the murmur of bedroom guidance, ‘Up a bit . . . down a bit . . . more to the left . . . MY left’.

Teenage girls passed Lace around in secret, so in a roundabout way, I reached my target audience.

Somewhat surprisingly, I encountered no negative reaction to Lace, except in Kansas City.

On my American publicity tour I flew into that town around midnight, only to be told that the City Fathers had forbidden me to make any appearances in public on radio or TV, because I was making my living out of sex.

I was 53-years-old at the time, a bit late for entry into the sex profession, but delighted to have a day off in the hotel, and wash my backlog of underwear.

Today, girls may know more about sex but Lace’s message of empowerment and equality is as relevant and important as it was 30 years ago.

It’s a pity that modern novels, especially informative ones, that involve women’s sexuality are put down as ‘mummy porn’, ‘bonkbusters’, ‘bodice rippers’, ‘beach-reads’, ‘wank-fodder’ or, simply, trash.

But what has clearly been proved, and what has changed in the last 30 years, is that women are far more openly interested in having an enjoyable sex life.

These days the perception of sex is everywhere – you can’t get away from it.

The other day I pressed the wrong button on my TV remote and there before me was a glistening eighteen-inch lavender penis, waving gently.

Male magazines are in full view at the local corner shop, and where modern children learn about sex is on the internet. What’s that you mutter? The paternal control button? Don’t make me laugh.

Unfortunately, sex-as-business productions are male-filtered, and so reinforce male misapprehensions about female sexual needs. They can also persuade some women that they must be abnormally unresponsive when they are not.

The result of sex-as-business is that teenage boys expect a naked teenage girl to look like the plastic-enhanced ladies featured in the media, with melon-sized boobs propping up their chin, legs lengthened by six inches courtesy of Photoshop, and bald genitalia.

Teenage girls have always felt not-good-enough, but now, as a result of male comparison and criticism, they borrow dad’s razor, buy their own Ladyshave or save up for a full Brazilian; they plan to have breast implants and facial silicone injections as soon as they can get their hands on enough cash.

Sometimes feeling not-good-enough leads to bulimia, anorexia or a victim mentality, and it always leads to lack of self-confidence.

What has changed since the 80s is that now women talk frankly about sex over coffee in a work break, in the kitchen at home, or when choosing lingerie at an Ann Summers gathering (the modern equivalent of a Tupperware party).

What is not yet discussed by either sex is female masturbation, which remains a taboo subject. Men think it is a) filthy, b) an affront to masculinity and to themselves personally. Nice women don’t do it.

But we do.

On the other hand, male masturbation is a) only natural, b) to provide a healthy relief before marriage or when a woman is not available, such as in prisons, warships, tents and tanks or anywhere, anytime, when alone and unobserved.

After the nine o’clock TV curfew, when all 14-year-olds are safely tucked up in their bed, TV comedians hurl male masturbation jokes at audiences, which roar with the laughter of recognition.

The French writer Colette once wrote that a good lover is one that can do it better than you can.

Maybe that’s why men don’t like the idea of a woman being able to please herself.  This is one perception that hasn’t changed a bit in 30 years – both in bed and out of it.

 

– Sydney Morning Herald

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Store opening breathes new life into unit empty for year

NEW life is being breathed into a Swansea store which has been empty for almost a year.

Lingerie chain La Senza closed its doors in Oxford Street after the group was placed into administration in January.

The chain had operated from its city centre premises since 2007 but mannequins in empty windows were all that remained of the business for the majority of this year.

Last week bargain group Just Genius, which has outlets in Bristol and Birmingham, opened in the unit, selling everything from space hoppers and lava lamps to adult toys and joke products.

Computer games chain CEX is also planning to open a new store opposite the former lingerie outlet in around three weeks time.

The group is in the process of fitting out a unit which became available after the collapse of greetings cards chain Clinton Cards, leaving another sizeable hole in the city centre street.

CEX buys, sells and exchanges a range of technology and entertainment products in its stores, which have grown from the first outlet opened in London in 1992.

Swansea Business Improvement District (BID) chief executive Russell Greenslade said foot flow was key to the success of any business. He added: “It’s very positive news that new businesses are choosing to come into the city centre.

“It will certainly help increase awareness of what’s on offer to other companies looking to open in a new location.

“Recent data shows people are staying longer in NCP car parks since we started a new offer, coupled with recent foot flow data showing that events we have supported working in partnership with the local authority have recruited thousands of more people into the city centre.”

A Swansea Council spokesman said: “We recognise these are difficult economic times in Swansea and across the UK as whole.

“This is why we have a series of schemes either in place or proposed for the future to help our city centre traders in the short-term and ensure they’re in a position to reap the rewards when economic conditions improve.”

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